


Ol' Toothy

by Raccoonfg



Series: Four Nights of Frights [2]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Boogeyman - Freeform, Gen, Horror, Sleepovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 02:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16441682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raccoonfg/pseuds/Raccoonfg
Summary: Ol’ Toothy, Ol’ Toothy, rise up from the hay.Ol’ Toothy, Ol’ Toothy, come out and let’s play.





	Ol' Toothy

The monster under the bed.

The creature in the closet.

The lurker in the basement.

The boogeymammal.

Almost every species in the world has one to call their own.

From The Bloody Mare, with her soaking red mane and the bone-chilling canter of her creeping under your window as you lay in bed.

To Three-Toed Flora, who only comes out on rainy evenings to slowly ask you if she’s pretty. One cut if she catches you lying - three if you tell the truth.

Or Honey Bear; never seen but always heard by the growing sound of buzzing bees and a wet, syrupy voice that drips down your eardrum, promising “something sweet”.

And even Candle Tail, who lures little kittens away into the night by the light of its tail, never to be heard from again.

Yes, it seems that when the witching hour is upon us, no animal is free from the ghoulies, the ghosties, the long-leggedy beasties, and all things that go bump in the night.

Not even the rabbits of Bunnyburrow.

Not when they have Ol’ Toothy.

Where did he come from? When did the rumors begin? No one really knows. The myths and tall-tales have changed and twisted over the years, but two things always stay the same.

What he looks like.

And how to summon him.

Between the early hours of two and four, you must go alone into a dark, windowless room; bringing with you a single candle, a match, and a mirror.

Once you are quietly sequestered from everyone else, set the mirror in front of you, light the candle, close your eyes, and repeat the following:

 _Ol’ Toothy_  
_Ol’ Toothy_  
_Rise up from the hay_

 _Ol’ Toothy_  
_Ol’ Toothy_  
_Come out and let’s play_

After that, open your eyes, and smile broadly into the mirror, as big as any rabbit can, with your buck-teeth shining brightly in the candle-light.

And if you can hold that smile long enough…

Maybe…

Just maybe…

Ol’ Toothy will lean over your shoulder and smile with you.

Heralded by the sharp, grinding sound of a steel file dragging over his teeth; the first thing you’ll see are his pearly whites glimmering in the dark.

His incisors jut down far below his chin; sloped together like a long, white garden trowel. And every following tooth lines neatly beside each other, row by row, like a narrow fence, as his lips stretch and curl until the corners of his mouth touch the tips of his temples.

Like his grin, his fur is a shock white, marred only by his pink nose and his eyes.

His eyes…

If marbles were made from coal, they still wouldn’t match the glassy blackness of his cruel, leering peepers. Just as he smiles with you as you gaze into the mirror, he also stares back, never blinking, sucking you deeper and deeper into their bottomless void, daring you to be the first to flinch - and lose.

And what is there to gain from calling him? A lifetime of good luck? A glimpse of your future husband or wife? A vision of how you will die? The simple bragging rights of meeting him and living to tell the tale?

Whatever the prize may be, there remains one last thing to always - **always** \- remember.

Before you leave the room - no matter if he appeared or not - always make sure to blow out the candle and say good day.

Or else he might come over, still looking to play.

 

* * *

 

“Ouch!”

Violet Hopps jerked her paw back in pain as the hot sting of the match’s flame bit at her fingertips, lightly singing her fur. Flashing out of existence, the tiny stick of wood tumbled into the sink with a light clatter.

She never really got the hang of using matches, but it was insisted on her that something easier like a barbeque lighter wasn’t acceptable.

‘You hafta do it properly,’ they told her.

So, if it had to be done properly, that’s how she was going to do it. Although, she was tempted to question the authenticity of using an apple-cinnamon scented candle with a picture of the Virgin Marmot on the side.

No matter; she still managed to light the candle before burning herself; setting the bathroom in a warm, flickering, amber glow. The teenage rabbit looked at her bespectacled face in the dim reflection of the mirror and watched the contours of her image ebb and flow with the dancing flame.

“Okay,” she quietly said to herself, taking a deep breath, “it’s now or never.”

Leaning against the sink, Violet brought her face close to the mirror and shut her eyes.

“Ol’ Toothy, Ol’ Toothy, rise up from the hay,” she softly chanted. “Ol’ Toothy, Ol’ Toothy, come out and let’s play.”

Slowly, Violet opened her eyes, one after another, finding nothing more than her own reflection staring back; echoing the rabbit’s mild disappointment.

‘Eh, it’s only a game,’ she thought to herself. ‘Let’s just get it over with.’

Gathering up about as much insincerity as she could on any given picture day at school, Violet spread her mouth wide into a great, big, carrot-eating grin; showing off so much teeth that her gums began to ache.

She didn’t really have to. It wasn’t like anyone could call her out if she lied about it. But all the same, it didn’t feel right to not bother playing along when all of her friends had done it.

At least, she was pretty certain they wouldn’t lie about it either.

‘How long am I supposed to keep this up?’

The throbbing discomfort of straining her face like this for so long was really starting to wear down the spooky thrill of the game for Violet. She didn’t feel scared so much as embarrassed for having to look at herself mimicking a bad toothpaste commercial this entire time.

The gentle, artificial smell of freshly baked pie that wafted from the candle wax at least made the situation bearable.

‘Just a few more seconds and I’ll come out laughing. Just let them sweat it out a moment--’

It was then that Violet could hear something from behind her. Something faint, yet irritable; a muffled metallic sound.

Still holding a waning smile, she cocked an ear back; listening to see if the sound would return.

And it did.

_Shhrk shhrk!_

Louder and sharper, the noise rang out in its unpleasant scraping; tickling the hairs of her inner ear.

_Shhrk shhrk!_

It continued to swell, angrily grating with each ragged drag; whining under a tense friction that squealed from front to back.

_Shhrk shhrk!_

_Shhrk shhrk!_

_Shhrk shhrk!_

And in that fitfully rising cacophony of steel, Violet could almost swear that in the corner of her eye, she could see another face taking form in the mirror.

Smiling.

Barely finding the strength to let out more than a choked squeak, Violet tore away from the mirror and ran out of the bathroom as fast as she could, slamming the door behind her.

If the grinding sound persisted, she couldn’t hear any of it; only the rapid beating of her little heart and the rhythmic breaths that flowed in and out of her twitching nose.

And something else.

“Pfft! Hahaha! You should see the look on your face.”

“Ugh,” Violet sighed, glowering at the group of rabbits standing around the dark hallway. “Good one Ginny.”

Of course it was Ginny.

After all, while the other girls were still suppressing giggles under their paws, Ginny was the only one who was practically in tears with laughter.

It also didn’t help that she was holding a pair of steel files in her paw.

“Oh man,” Ginny snickered, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to pull that off, Vi.”

Violet rolled her eyes as she straightened her glasses. “Glad I could be the highlight of the evening.”

But in spite of herself, she couldn’t help but chuckle a little; seeing how it was pretty silly for someone who was almost in junior high could get spooked out by a kid’s game like ‘Ol’ Toothy’.

“Hey,” a voice hissed from down the hall, causing the girls to turn and see the large silhouette of Mrs. Brerson leaning out of her bedroom door. “It’s after two in the morning. The lot of you better go to bed or no more sleepovers.”

“Awww!”

“I mean it,” she warned. “And not another peep.”

Knowing better than to push her, the girls shuffled off to the bedroom where their sleeping bags had all been laid out; with Ginny and her sisters Milly and Georgette taking to their beds.

After carefully placing her glasses in their case, Violet slipped into her bag, still chiding herself for getting caught up in Ginny’s prank.

‘Honestly,’ she thought, snorting as she rolled over to make herself comfortable, ‘there’s no such thing as boogeymammals.’

As her eyelids began to grow heavy, she took one last look at the window that hung over her friend’s bed. A soft whistle could be heard from outside as a steady breeze rustled the trees in the yard. And as she drifted off to sleep, the last thing she saw was a branch, swaying close to the windowpane, beckoning her with a clawed wave.

 

* * *

 

It was still dark when she woke up.

Something had disturbed her sleep, but as she blearily squinted around the unlit bedroom, nothing could be found. Everyone else appeared to be soundly sleeping, barely uttering so much as a single snore. Even the house stood deathly still, free of the creaks and groans of moaning floorboards.

And then in the middle of the silent lull, she heard it.

Strange and distant.

A cadent sound of scratching.

_Shhrk shhrk._

Flinching, Violet clutched at the edge of her sleeping bag, instinctively hiding all but her eyes under the covering. Was something out there? Did someone break into her friend’s house?

‘No,’ she thought, slowly regaining her nerve, ‘it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. There was that branch, right? The wind probably picked up and it’s scraping against the window, that’s all.’

Only, as she put on her glasses and turned to the window to reassure her theory, she realized that the wind was no longer blowing and the branch merely stood there, steady as a rock.

_Shhrk shhrk._

“G-gin?” Violet whispered urgently; cautiously sliding out from her makeshift bedding. “Ginny? This isn’t funny.”

She crept across the floor, tiptoeing over the other guests, and made her way towards Ginny’s bed, expecting to find her friend sniggering from beneath her bed sheets. But to her surprise, Ginny was fast asleep, tucked comfortably beneath her sheets, and the steel files were resting on a nearby nightstand, sheathed inside Mr. Brerson’s folding toolkit.

‘Ok, calm down. There’s got to be a logical reason for this,’ Violet thought, rapidly tapping a claw on her buck teeth.

_Shhrk shhrk._

‘I hope.’

She could hear the slow, methodical scraping more clearly now; coming from outside the bedroom - deeper into the house.

All rationality told her to just go back to bed. Ignore it. But looking at the doorway, she knew that she had to find out what it was - she **needed** to know what it was.

It was the only way she could be sure that she was right.

‘Monsters aren’t real.’

So she quietly approached the door, silently turned the knob, and slipped out into the dark hallway to find her proof.

Without windows, the hall was an almost formless span of indistinguishable doorways, made barely visible by a dim light off in the distance, where the bathroom door hung ajar.

Only halfway melted, the candle was still lit.

‘I couldn’t have been asleep for very long…’

Maybe it was Mrs. Brerson puttering around, unable to sleep after scolding the bunch of them. Her own parents had the habit of milling around the house when they felt restless, so it was fair to assume the same went for other adults. Plus, if she and the girls made enough of a ruckus to wake one person up, it was possible that any other Brerson could have been just as rudely awoken as the mother of the house.

Tuning her ears left and right, Violet listened for some sign of stirring in any of the other rooms, but they were all so silent that they may as well have been empty.

“H-hello?” she asked in a hushed whisper. “Is anybody awake?”

 _Shhrk shhrk_ was the only reply; ringing from the bottom of the stairwell.

And like a sailor chasing a siren, she followed; gently sneaking down the steps as she descended down towards the main floor.

Normally warm and welcoming, the foyer looked very different in the evening light. A generous array of windows allowed far more light in than the hallway above, but the shallow blue hues that accentuated the furnishings around her made everything seem stretched out and imposing, giving her the feeling of being more of a trespasser than a guest.

And yet, despite everything, she felt so strangely alone.

_Shhrk shhrk._

The off-pitch grating crawled up the back of her neck; tingling at the nape like someone had just brushed their claws along the long, fine hairs that stuck out from her fur. Violet reflectively jerked around, still half-expecting Ginny to be behind her, ready to shout ‘boo’ in her face.

But Ginny wasn’t there.

Far off in the living room, standing in the shadows, was the tall dark shape of a rabbit. Like everything else she saw around her, the figure seemed distorted and impossibly tall; nearly touching the ceiling with the tips of its ears. Violet could only assume that her own eyes were playing tricks on her - that what she was looking at was merely the shadow they were casting and not the rabbit itself.

“W-who’s there..?”

“You woke me up.”

His voice was soft, airy, yet soaked in a blunt undertone that made his words hang in the air like a thick, humid fog; the kind that dampens your clothes as it drips down your back.

“I’m- I’m sorry, I--”

“You called me here.”

Slightly bowing forward, the shape began to move towards her, stepping out into the moonlight. He seemed to almost melt into the room as the evening glow illuminated his white fur, giving him a ghostly presence. Like knives, his long ears protruded sharply over his head and his whiskers jutted out in odd, twisted strands.

And as he stood in the moonbeam, risen up to his full, gangly height, he looked down on Violet with his dead, black, shark-like eyes. His lips peeled back into a wide, fiendish grin and he raised a large iron file - all covered in dents and rust - up to his two long, plunging front teeth.

“So why do you tremble, when Ol’ Toothy is near?”

_Shhrk shhrk._

There was no hesitation. Violet ran as quickly as she could.

She darted back up the stairs, racing around the bend of the banister while shouting “Help, help!”

Ol’ Toothy only snickered in sputtered snorts as he shambled behind her, sharpening his teeth.

Making her way to the top, she immediately started banging doors and twisting knobs, pleading for help. But all she got in return were stubborn locks and apathetic silence.

“Mr. and Mrs. Brerson, please!”

A heavy groan of creaking wood came from the stairwell. Violet looked over her shoulder and saw Ol’ Toothy’s head bobbing up from below as he slowly ascended the stairs.

“Little bunny. Little bunny,” he hummed in a mirthfully malicious tone. “Can’t you see? There’s no one else but you and me.”

Giving up on alerting the adults, Violet dashed back down the hall to Ginny’s room, slamming the door behind her before running to her friend’s bed.

“Ginny,” she squeaked, “Ginny wake up! He’s real! Ol’ Toothy is real!”

But as she hurriedly shook and rustled at the sheets, struggling to wake up her friend, all that Violet found to be there was an empty bed.

“No…”

Sprinting from bed to bed, sleeping bag to sleeping bag, she threw back their coverings, revealing only vacancies.

Tears in her eyes, Violet dropped to her knees.

She was alone.

No one could help her.

_Shhrk shhrk._

She could hear his footsteps coming down the hall now, slowly growing closer and closer as he lumbered towards the room. She was trapped with no way out.

‘Gotta hide… Gotta hide…’

Spotting the dark open space beneath Ginny’s bed, Violet got down on her belly and crawled underneath; shifting her body around so she wouldn’t be seen, but could still get a view of the room.

She laid there, waiting.

His footsteps grew louder and louder, and the grinding of his teeth swelled higher and higher until she could hear him right outside the door.

‘Please go away… Please go away…’

For a moment, everything went quiet, leaving only the sound of her shallow breathing to fill the void. But no sooner had she gotten her wish than the doorknob started to rattle, prompting Violet to cover her mouth and muffle her panicked panting.

With little effort, the door swung open, and from her low, narrow view Violet could see a pair of white feet step into the room; with each toe tipped by a long, pallid claw.

“Come out, come out,” Ol’ Toothy crooned. “Show your sweet head.”

Clutching her mouth tighter, Violet choked down a lump in her throat while she watched him pace about the room.

Every so often, he would poke his iron file into the bed sheets that she had strewn about and emit a soft hiss of disappointment.

“Come out, come out,” he chuckled with a sickening cluck. “Let’s be playmates instead.”

And then his wandering finally led him over to where she was, with his feet practically sitting inches away from her own face. Stiffening her body, Violet struggled to hold her breath as much as she could while she felt the mattress above her press down on her body as Ol’ Toothy jabbed away at it.

Giving it one last hard stab, he paused and then finally stepped away from the bed, heading back towards the door.

And as his heavy footsteps lurched out into the hall, they carried with them his unearthly voice, still humming as it drifted away.

“Come out… Come out…”

Shaking from the close call, Violet waited until she could hear the groaning of the stairs before she eventually released her mouth.

Taking short, silent breaths through her nose, she continued to listen until the very last step had finished creaking and the metallic scratching had become as distant as when she first woke up.

Then, and only then, did she allow herself to close her eyes and breathe a sigh of relief.

The monster was gone.

She was safe.

“From under your bed!”

Violet barely managed to open her eyes in time to see a large, clawed, white paw reach out and grab her by the shoulder, violently dragging her screaming from under the bed. Practically tossing the bed on its side, Ol’ Toothy hoisted her high up in the air while he cackled wildly. His midnight eyes rolled with glee as his broad, glimmering mouth opened wide.

Painfully suspended by the scruff of her hide, all Violet could do was thrash and kick while her cries for help choked and died in her throat. A long red tongue lashed out from the gaping chasm of his mouth, wrapping itself around her leg, dragging her down into his hungry maw, leaving the last thing she would ever see be his long sharp teeth, slowly closing down on her.

 

* * *

 

“Aaahh!!”

Jerking up from her bed sheets, Violet’s heart pounded as she feverishly looked around to understand where she was.

It wasn’t the belly of a beast or the Brersons’ house.

It was her room.

“A- A dream..?”

“Shhh…”

Violet felt a gentle paw touch her on the shoulder and she looked up to see the hazy figure of her mother standing over her.

“Sorry Mom,” Violet began to groggily apologize as she felt around her nightstand for her glasses. “I had the worst dream about sleeping at Ginny’s… There was this monster chasing me and I tried to get away, but--”

“Silly bunny,” Bonnie Hopps cooed, giving her daughter another calming pat on the arm.

“I know… It just- seemed so real…”

Pausing from her search, Violet gave a bashful smile and touched her mother’s paw in return.

But something felt off.

“Silly bunny…”

“M-mom..?”

The hairs on the back of Bonnie’s paw were coarse and rough. And the soft plumpness seemed more shallow and bony.

Slipping from her grasp, Violet frantically traced her paws over the table, just managing to catch her frames by the arm.

“Can’t you see?” Bonnie asked with a strange giggle in her voice.

Fumbling in her panic, Violet fixed the glasses to her face and turned to see her mother now leaning in close, practically nose-to-nose with her.

Her wide, mocking eyes were pitch black and her mouth curled up into a twisted grin so taut that her lips split and bled.

And as she grotesquely leered down at Violet, she spoke in a moist and fragile rasp.

“You will never escape from me.”


End file.
